Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Cliven Bundy and the Contract Citizens of the United States

While his two sons languish in jail and the Finicum Family moves forward preparing for a tragic funeral, Cliven Bundy continues his vendetta against the People of the United States.

Having the form of legality by denying the authority thereof. And he can't spell "Malheur."

From Cliven Bundy's Blog dated Sunday, January 31, 2016, I copied the following:

With money and fear we will justify the assassination of LaVoy Finicum and make political prisoners of all that dare to lift their hand. (We can, we will kill.) This is our livelihood and we will protect our right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so help me Devil!

. . . . We, the rancher, signed contracts with the federal government such a leases, permits and licenses. We, the rancher, signed contracts giving the US bureaucracies unlimited power to manage our stewardship and we pay them a grazing fee to do this. This contract between the individual and the US government puts both parties in the federal court system because one party or the other breaches something in the contract. In the federal court system the resource user NEVER wins. Remember a contract has been signed that says they have unlimited power. This contract takes the constitutional jurisdiction and authority away from your local sheriff, away from your county government, away from state government giving unlimited power to the federal bureaucrats – BLM, Forest Service, US Fish & Wildlife, Park Service, EPA and etc. This is what LaVoyFinicum, my sons, Shawna Cox, and other patriots were out in the western lands trying to teach. This is why they assassinated LaVoy Finicum.

That last part is very interesting. (The fist part is simply chilling in its audacious threats of death and violence invoking the devil himself!)

The idea that ranchers have entered contracts with the United States granting sovereignty comes from some very bizarre theories of the far right. If there is any logic to follow this argument at all it is that the United States government has violated the original intent of the U.S. Constitution to the point that the government is only a corporate entity. Individual "sovereign citizens" or "corporate citizens" somehow under the Uniform Commercial Code (generally recognized throughout the United States as a standard for state statutes on commercial paper and other monetary and contractual obligations) can refuse to sign anything with the supposed illegitimate government of the United States and therefore remain free of the corporate sovereignty or power of agencies of the federal government. I know. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.

Oh, and by the way, the BLM does not have "unlimited power." BLM loses cases in court all the time. Well, not all the time. The United States actually prevails in court more often than not mostly because its attorneys tell the agencies when they have a bad case and they need to settle or fix something. (Done it many times myself).

This "sovereign citizen" idea appears to be related to some equally bizarre theories that the Fourteenth Amendment created a class of citizenship different than the "original intent" citizens of the Constitution as written, that would be, White, Christian Males. Yes. This is absolutely ludicrous. And not only very illogical and stupid but highly racist as the whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to make Freed Slaves equal citizens with the rest of the People of the United States. Sadly, history was not kind to the Freed Slaves and Jim Crow took the place of Reconstruction. Ideas about segregation and the inferiority of African-Americans as a class of people were promoted and established by law and in many social and religious institutions. The anti-Communist zealots of the 1950's and 60's, such as W. Cleon Skousen, attempted to link Civil Rights with international Communism.

Some, like Cliven Bundy, appear not to have recovered from the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of a hundred years later, now more than 50 years in the past. And it was Cliven who invoked the devil, not me!

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I am pretty liberal politically. However, there is no way to classify me as a "liberal Mormon" as I choose to support all official doctrine and policy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as I fight against aspects of unofficial "cultural" Mormonism. And being passionately moderate in temperament (mostly), I still remain a Passionate, Moderate Member of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. However, I have now changed the masthead in response to the presidential election of 2016. Maybe there will come a day when I can go back to moderation.

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